Develop a Project Plan for Your Website

A good project plan for your new website to display on iPhone and iPad is composed of a series of tasks, a budget, a timeline, and a list of needed resources and materials. Taking the time to create a detailed project plan gives you a structure within which you can work with greater confidence and a much better chance of meeting your original goals on time and on budget.

Even if you're simply sketching your idea on the back of a napkin, arriving at a clear and agreed-on vision of your destination increases your chances of getting there on time ¯ and on budget.

Follow these basic steps to create a site plan:

Define the goals and objectives of your site.

Create a wireframe.

Organize your content and create a content list.

Create a task list.

Visualize what you need to do at every stage of the site creation process. Then break that down into tasks that need to be accomplished. Note whether a task is dependent on the completion of an earlier one. This list helps you estimate how long the project will take and the resources needed.

Set a timeline.

Using your task list from the previous step, estimate the time it will take to accomplish each task. Keep in mind that the creative process is rarely problem-free; you need to allow a reasonable amount of time for unforeseen problems, such as having your site-rendering technology take longer than you think. Setting a timeline helps you guide the process and enables you to change plans if needed.

Establish a budget.

Not surprisingly, the bigger and more complex your mobile site, the more money you’ll likely need.

Assemble a team.

You may not have all the skills or time to do everything that needs to be done. Here are some common roles:

Team Leader: Every team needs someone who is able to make the final decisions.

Designer: Depending on the scale of the project, besides the familiar graphic designer, the team may need a user experience (UX) designer, creative designer, or interaction designer.

Client-side developer: Also known as a user interface (UI) designer, this developer specializes in creating interfaces that function efficiently on the iPad/iPhone platform.

Server-side developer: If you are building a dynamic site, you will want to have a developer skilled in programming languages like PHP or JavaScript to handle the server side code.

Database administrator: Depending on the complexity of the site, you may also need a database specialist to set up and maintain a database.

Create a site design and navigation structure.

Clean and efficient navigation is important on any website, but even more so on devices with smaller screens, such as the iPhone and iPad.

You don’t need to go into exhaustive depth about every step, but keeping these steps in mind can help you impose order on chaos if you start to feel like you’re losing focus during the design process.